A few months after my 16th birthday, I suffered a serious back injury. It wasn’t until 4 months later that I was sent for an MRI scan and some X-rays, and found that I had 2 prolapsed discs and a trapped nerve in my back. This injury caused me to experience very severe scoliosis, which my physiotherapist told me at the time was one of the worst cases she had seen in her career. Optimistically, I was told the typical amount of time for a prolapsed disc to improve was around 8 weeks. It is now 4 and a half years later and I’m still managing it day to day. After a year of intensive treatment, I went for another MRI scan to find the discs had prolapsed further and one of them also had a tear. I went through multiple osteopathy sessions, just over a year of intense physiotherapy, acupuncture and a year and a half of treatment on an IDD machine which is still ongoing. I went from having treatment 3x every week, to recently extending treatment to once every 6 weeks. The worst part about having the injury was the pain and having to stop playing sport completely. 

I had been training as a gymnast since I was 8 years old,  competing at county level competitions and performing at displays around the country. Unfortunately I struggled to walk for more than 5 minutes without needing to stop, so Gymnastics wasn’t possible. Being shifted made me feel very self-conscious so I chose to cover it with baggy jumpers and puffy coats. It has been hard to accept that I will never do gymnastics at the level I did before this happened. I didn’t think it would be so difficult having to completely stop playing sport and doing what I loved. This caused my mental health to decline massively. I went through periods of Counselling and Cognitive behavioural therapy but neither of these were specific to sport and I felt they could only help me so much. Due to my mental health becoming so poor, I went through a long period of eating very little, and ended up weighing around 40kg. At the time, I didn’t know where to look for sport specific help. I am in a much better position now, physically and mentally, due to spending lots of time focusing on my eating, going to the gym and looking after myself mentally. 

Since building myself back up and getting back to a much better mental and physical state, I have found the work that Sporting Wellness (previously known as Sporting Minds) does for athletes in my position and I feel they could have massively helped me at my time of need. The charity helps athletes with the psychological impacts of being unable to play sport, one reason being because of an injury. The money raised will provide a minimum of 6 sessions of in-person counselling or CBT, an app, constant resources and a 24 hour helpline for a number of athletes. The work they do is sport specific which can make all the difference to someone struggling mentally. I’d like to raise awareness for this charity so that others in a similar position to me, know where to go for support and help if they need it. I have decided to cycle 5k every day for the month of September as this will be a challenge for me physically because of the nerve pain in my leg. If anyone would like to come along to cycle a 5k with me at any point during the month, please let me know. I will be cycling in the Cirencester PureGym so anyone with a membership or if you’d like to pay for a one off session to come along that would be amazing! Any donation, no matter how much, would be hugely appreciated. 

Thank you xx